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She’d yelled back, saying she couldn’t live like this anymore. He’d given her a cold half-life that wasn’t worth the trouble. She’d already found another man, in another pack, and she wanted a divorce. She was going out for the night, but when she returned, she’d be packing up all her things and moving out for good.
Then she’d left.
He’d been shocked. He’d paced the rest of the night, waiting for her to come home. He’d made a huge mistake with her and he needed to start making amends, if he could.
Yet even then, he’d doubted his ability to make things work with Sharon.
Of course, she hadn’t come home and by nightfall the next day, he’d received word she’d been dumped a half mile from the Gordion Compound, near the canal. Sun exposure had damaged her corpse, but the Savage Medical Examiner said she’d been killed as a result of rough sex with a powerful male wolf who had bitten through her neck and fractured her spine while marking her.
Her death had become the final layer of the steel door he still used to keep himself focused on the safety of his pack.
As he brought his thoughts back to the present and the guest bathroom came into view again, he sank to the cold tile floor. He leaned his head against the cabinet and closed his eyes. He lifted his hand, intending to press his eyes and get rid of some of the burn, but his fingers got caught in the lace of one of the gowns, the black one that Mary had worn just before she’d left.
He’d failed Sharon.
And he’d sent Mary away without her knowing for even a second how much she really meant to him.
Suddenly, he felt inadequate in a way he couldn’t explain. He’d sacrificed his life for his pack. It should have been enough, yet it wasn’t.
The pack came first.
The pack always came first.
He remained on the floor for a long time. He wasn’t the same man that he’d been a couple of nights ago. He’d died out in the Graveyard when Sydon had skewered his heart.
But he wasn’t sure he’d truly been reborn. Instead, he’d launched straight back into his old life once his pack was secure. Yet now that everything was in order, he felt extremely restless and dissatisfied as he’d never been before.
He didn’t want to keep living this way.
Even acknowledging his dissatisfaction was new for him, a sign of the fae abilities and powers that had become part of his soul since he’d been with Mary. Yet he didn’t know what goal he was mentally chasing right now. Did he expect to have a sudden life-altering epiphany?
The pack came first.
But what about Mary? Where was she right now? Probably in her home and in bed for the day. Would she start seeing pet patients again? Resume her life as a veterinarian? Would she forgive him for shutting her out so completely? Woul
d she understand? Did she want any part of him?
He finally rose to his feet, showered and headed to bed. He’d expected Mary to stay with him through the day. He’d wanted to make love to her again. But as a sensitive fae, there was no way she could have ignored the steel door he’d slammed down in front of her.
When he finally lay on his side in bed and pulled the sheet up, he relinquished his attempts to make his current situation fit into the box of the past.
Time would serve him in this situation. It would dim his memories of being with Mary and help him to recommit to the wolves of his pack. He’d find some way to chart a new path without her.
He fell asleep reasonably content with those thoughts.
Hours later and somewhere in his dreams, he smelled a female wolf scent that woke him. He smelled Mary, though he knew she wasn’t with him. A longing for her so intense came over him, that even in his half-sleep, he released a howl that filled the entire soundproof room.
Then he was chasing her in his dreams through thorns that bloodied him.
~ ~ ~
Mary awoke to the sound of Fergus howling, or at least she thought that’s what she heard. But the howls were full of so much pain, she could hardly breathe.
She sat up in bed.
Fergus? She tried reaching him telepathically over and over but nothing returned.
She left her bed and went into the well-shuttered living room. It was late in the afternoon, which meant she’d slept soundly for hours.
